1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to ornamental articles in general, and more particularly to articles of jewelry and methods of making the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are already known various constructions of jewelry articles, such as pendants, rings, earrings, charms or the like, among them such which incorporate real precious metal, especially gold, coins. While jewelry of this type has a high degree of aesthetic appeal to many individuals, both would-be owners and mere observers, it is well beyond the means of many of them. While this limited affordability of such items may contribute to their overall appeal, there are still many people who would be willing to pay more for a genuine jewelry article containing real gold or other precious metal rather than a cheap imitation, if only it was not that prohibitively expensive.
The advent of laser technology has created diverse possibilities in many fields of human endeavor in that it made it possible to produce various rather intricate products at a relatively low cost by, among other things, using laser rays to produce a variety of patterns on a substrate or in a layer that coats a substrate by causing the material of such layer or such substrate to evaporate to the requisite depth from selected regions and not from others. Examples of arrangements and methods using this approach can be found, for instance, in the following U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,588,439 to Heller, et al.; 3,665,483 to Becker, et al.; 3,832,948 to Barker; 4,081,653 to Koo, et al.; 4,156,124 to Macken, et al.; 4,480,169 to Macken; and 5,235,154 to Economicos.
As advantageous as the expedients disclosed in these patents may be for the purposes for which they have been developed, they would have only a limited, if any, applicability in the jewelry field, and then only with substantial modifications. Thus, since most if not all of these references deal with metal-coated substrates, they could have some applicability to, say, costume or gold-plated jewelry, a field that is separate and distinct from and totally unrelated, beyond surface resemblance, to the real precious metal jewelry field. In any event, nether one of these references contains any suggestions how their approaches could be applied in the manufacture of real, rather than metal-coated, jewelry.